The Colors Make the Character

I’ve had some things to think about. Haha, that’s the understatement of forever. I’m always thinking about stuff, but let me be more specific. I’ve been thinking about color. I’ve thought about color composition off and on periodically since I started drawing the characters in Rumors of War, particularly flesh tones, hair colors, and so forth.

Since I watched cookiemonger replay the Quest for Glory series, I’ve been thinking about how color sets up certain expectations. Odd and blocky character designs that don’t allow for intricate detail force the player to inject more imagination than fabulous 3-D rendered models with textures, lighting, physics, and stuff.

Minor tangent: I had this idea once that in order for a high-budget game to get green-lit, it should be able to tell its story and mechanics with a board game, or using NES-era graphics. If it’s too complicated to be explained with only a handful of sentences and some funny blocks, it’s back to the drawing board.

Anyway, I’ve been thinking that I really need to make my own backgrounds, finally, especially if I’m going to make an actual, eh, RPG Maker game or somesuch. I haven’t really decided what software to use, but I’m going to try and make a couple things into a reality. One of those things is backgrounds. That’s where colors come in, actually.

I’ve been meaning to give the characters a collective facelift and create some new sprites, and I’ve been thinking that in order to do so, it might help me to simplify them, so that I can produce more of them. I was starting to get into some rather complex shading and design, and I think that’s the opposite of what I want.

While I want diversity in character appearance, I want the reader to be able to project a fair amount of their own thoughts and opinions onto the characters, which I think also means stripping them down more when it comes to their visual aspect. They aren’t quite universal archetypes, but they are, uh, somewhat “blank.”